Thursday, November 29, 2012

[Update]
The numbers here are incorrect. An update with immigration figures for E-2s in Daejeon over the past few years is here.

[Original Post]

The Daejeon City Journal reports that according to a survey by the Daejeon Seobu Education Office, as of November there are 375 foreign instructors working at 105 hagwons there, up from 169 at the end of last year, an increase of 206. As well, at the end of 2010 there were only 105, meaning the number of foreign instructors has increased three times in the past two years. It states that this increase is due to hagwons trying to satisfy the demands of parents for foreign instructors, and projects further increases.

All I have to say to that is that it seems odd that there would be such a jump foreign instructors in Daejeon at this time; I would have though the days of such increases would be past. Or perhaps it's due to development in western Daejeon? Does anyone have any ideas? I'd rather not believe that NoCut News' nonsensical article from early 2011 about illegal native speaking teachers descending on Daejeon to escape new regulations in Seoul was true...

3 comments:

Unless the numbers are straight from the Daejeon Immigration office, I call absolute bullshit on this. If anything, enrollment in hagwons is significantly declining as fewer children are being born and more and more fools are trying to enter the hagwon owner business and diluting it into swill which is one of the main reasons I call BS on this nonsense.

My hagwon has had two former teachers leave (one was fired) and start up their own academies over the last couple of years. One was able to even hire a native English teacher, but both of them are now out of business as they weren't very savvy about the business aspects of running a business without enough of a client base to begin with. This is no more than another example of the yellow journalism that pervades the country at its best.

I wouldn't doubt the increase: the number of 'NEST' teachers has increased dramatically in the past few years to somewhere over or around 30,000 (http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/n_feature/2011/04/04/99/4901000000AEN20110404002300315F.HTML). I'm sure there are several factors effecting this increase: certainly a major one would be the global capitalist economy's decline, and it's effect on many university graduates' being unable to find adequate employment in their home countries; then they here about teaching EFL in contexts like Japan, South Korea, and China, and it's a no-brainer to use those base qualifications to become an EFL 'teacher' in SK: 1. Have a bachelor's degree 2. Be a 'native English speaker'. And, as so many of these teachers are attracted to the capital, Seoul, apparently around 300 or so could have easily opted to seek employment in markets with less competition in other bustling urban centers like 대전 and 부산.

Actually, those numbers were false, at least according to immigration figures (see here). I've updated the post above. As well, that Yonhap report is over two years old, and public schools have cut native speaking teachers quite a bit since then. The number of E-2 visa holders dropped from a high of about 24,000 in early 2011 to just above 20,000 last month. (It's hard to know how many F-visa holders teach English; I'd imagine a few thousand, at least).